Photo Editing: Hip to Be Square

After two years of selecting and cropping images for the Wonderful Machine website, I’ve grown quite accustomed to (and fond of) working within the space of the square. So when photographer Peter Baker approached me about editing his square-heavy repertoire, I was ecstatic.

Peter was gearing up for a complete reboot of his photographic identity and was looking for a bit of help. After some preliminary correspondence, we agreed to create a fresh edit for his new website and then follow that up with a portfolio book. I’d taken an instant liking to Peter’s style upon going through his work when he first joined Wonderful Machine, but diving into a folder full of several hundred of his images was truly rewarding. Peter takes refreshingly genuine portraits and some of the most laid back and authentic lifestyle photography I’ve come across. He excels at capturing ethereal landscapes—both in the wilderness and urban jungles. He’s also quite adept at utilizing his photography to share his reflections on our humble earth with a meditative and visually poetic delivery. Peter’s central motivation for pursuing editing consultation was to take this contemplative body of work to the next level—to obtain “a fresh eye looking from a commercial standpoint.” Well, helping talented artists advance their creativity towards commercial relevance is what we do best here; so I got straight to work on formulating a presentation of his photography that would resonate well with his expanding audience.

I should mention at this point that Peter is also an accomplished graphic designer with an impressive track record of websites delivered through his company, Elevated Works. So while I was working away at developing Portrait, Lifestyle, Corporate and Landscape galleries of his photography, he was busy taking a very hands-on approach to setting up a great new home for these galleries. Working in tandem like this enabled a collaborative mood and a fruitful exchange of ideas about aesthetics, editing, logos, stamping embossers, and the wonders of side scrolling galleries.

While we were getting his website ready to launch, we were also thinking ahead to the print portfolio. I was pleased when he agreed to one of Adorama’s seamless binding treats, and thrilled when he signed on for a book in the form of my dearest shape (aside from curvy hips): the square. Concepts about how to best utilize 50 surfaces of 12×12 quadrilateral goodness began to bubble up, as well as how to encompass these squares within an inviting cover design.

I know we’re all told not to judge a book by its cover, but the reality is that a portfolio can score or lose points with its audience before a single photograph hits their eyeballs. How you choose to present your work is an important aspect of who you are as a photographer. For the cover design, Peter and I were on the same page: minimal yet intriguing. We’d been corresponding about his new logo while he was developing it, and when it was finalized he sent me an Adobe Illustrator file to experiment with for the book cover.

My favorite aspect of vector files is the ability to expand their scale endlessly without loss of quality. So, immediately upon receiving Peter’s logo file, I instinctively began blowing it up until his “P” and “B” began transforming into abstract forms with residual hints of their former lives as letters. I honed in on a nice crop of the transformation that could wrap around the 12×12’s cover, added some mockup text, and sent it over to Peter to see what he thought. Now I’ve been working with the visual arts since I was just a tyke sporting a tiny beret, but nonetheless, there’s still something a bit intimidating about sending designs to designers. Fortunately, Peter was stoked about what I’d come  up with and used his years of expertise to really make it sing. I couldn’t be happier with the final result, and I’m elated to share it with art directors, photo editors, even strangers I pass in the street. And of course, with you. Enjoy!

And be sure to check out Peter’s new site, peterbaker.net.

If you’re looking for help with your portfolio, design, copy, marketing, or to learn more about our services, please visit our consulting page or shoot us an email!